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In a recent interview conducted by MetalMatriarch.com during SABATON’s first tour of North America, vocalist Joakim Brodén shared the Swedish war metal band’s plans for places they’d like to play.

MM: Back during the Art of War tour, you performed on the battlefield of Wizna, which is the place that the song “40:1” refers to. If there was any battlefield or location from one of your songs that you could play, what would it be?

JB: It’s funny you mention Wizna. At the Orlando show, there was a guy about 50 years old with his son, and actually they came from Wizna all the way to Orlando to see the show. They were there on that day [we played on the battlefield], which was exactly on the 70th anniversary of the battle. They staged a military re-enactment during the day; all of a sudden, there were explosions on the battlefield and proper World War II tanks on the field. That stuff is huge in Poland.

It was not like a metal concert at all. There were about 10,000 people, and 50% of them were retired people or kids. It was really cool to see. That was on the 7th of September. Then on the 8th of September, once it hit midnight, we started “40:1.” And they went fucking crazy.

The whole setup was on the field, and there was a download slope toward the stage. The crash barriers weren’t really holding. So they had 60 men from the Polish army holding the crash barriers upright. They were there to watch, really, and some were there in the re-enactment, but they had to be called into service, you know.

[He laughs, then pauses.]

As for your question, I already have it in my mind. 6th of June, 2014. I want to do it; I’m going to make sure, I don’t know how, but I’m going to making fucking sure it happens. Pär and I are crazy about that. We’ve even had preliminary negotiations with the mayors. We’re also halfway through getting permission to perform at Auschwitz.

But, back to the 6th of June. Normandy Beach. On the shores of Western Europe, 1944. So the 6th of June, 2014 – 70 years again.

We’ve got a lot of people from the military helping us out already – a lot of people who collect stuff. One guy has two authentic landing crafts that they used during the war. If we pay the diesel for it, we can use it. I don’t know how many they fit, probably 40-50 people, so we could possibly get 100 tickets out there to people where they actually enter a landing craft about a mile or two away, sail to sea and then enter straight in onto the beach as the intro [to our concert] runs. I don’t know how we could get more, but I want more, but at least he promised his two. We already scouted the location on the beach, so we just need permission now.

SABATON recently completed their maiden tour of the U.S. and Canada and will be returning to North America with Evergrey this September.

View the teaser for the upcoming video for the Coat Of Arms track “Screaming Eagles” here.

View a video here of SABATON bassist Pär Sundström with an American fan from the 101st Airborne Division who drove five hours just to hear “Screaming Eagles” played live.

View the video for the track “Uprising” – “a powerful and emotional tribute to those who lost their lives in the Warsaw uprising in 1944” – at this location. The “Making Of” video with English subtitles can be viewed here. Stills from the video shoot can be viewed here.

SABATON’s fifth studio album and Nuclear Blast debut, Coat Of Arms, has been certified gold in Poland for sales in excess of 10,000 copies and debuted at #124 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart and #87 on the Top Hard Music chart. Worldwide first-week chart entries were as follows: Sweden #4; Poland #9; Finland #17; Germany #19; Switzerland #33 and Austria #71.